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Yeah, it was Saturday
November 15, 2003.
And so we went for a ride in the Sanyo blimp!
And it was raining that morning,
I thought, "Oh no, we're not going to get to go."
But as soon as we got there, it cleared up and it turned out to be a beautiful day.
You can see the bottles of helium laying down over there
that we ordered for our trip here to Oakland
for the next couple of weeks.
And they had a mast built out there
that attaches the blimp to it.
It doesn't really look like
a contraption that should be up there flying.
It's a big goofy bubble
with a little bay below it. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
The ropes on the front of it are used for holding the nose steady so that if the wind changes direction, the tail can swing free.
We were going to have six people on the flight, but instead they sent us up in two
groups of three, because it had rained that morning
and the blimp was wet and that added a lot of extra weight to it. So we had to lighten it up a little bit.
As the young folks depart on their first flight, into the blimp they go!
It’s going to be fun. I've got to say, I learned a lot from those guys.
They were very informative and very thoughtful
in the time that they took to explain everything.
Normally, when you climb
in any machine would slow down
in any machine, you'd slow down. Not so in the airship.
And when you descend, you accelerate, like when you're at Six Flags,
but not on the airship.
Again, because the buoyancy is being provided by the weight of the atmosphere
holding the lighter helium balloon up.
If you're going level at 35, you go up at 35, you go down at 35,
even though
it’s a thirty-degree angle.
When you're sitting in the airship, and you're moving those kinds of angles,
your mind starts to wander. Going up is not such a big deal,
but when you start to pitch over, and start looking at all the ground and the ocean,
and stuff, that's when your mind starts to go, "Wooooah!" [laughter] It's kind of neat.
Oakland tower, six-five-five-zero-lima, Ready for takeoff. Runway one-five.
Oh, there's my house. Look, if you follow this street, this one's Stockton and that's Columbus.
And if you follow the streets straight up, You’re going to see my house.
They call these blimps lightships because inside of them, they have two
thousand watt light bulbs, so that when they fly over sports games at night,
they can light up the whole envelope.
The pilot said that they powered these lights with a
plain old Honda generator like the kind you get at Home Depot,
and they put it in there in the cabin with them, and the pilot has to go back there and
pull the string and fire the thing up before he takes off so that
the lights will operate. I can't believe that you guys do this for charity
for the believe in tomorrow foundation. And you take sick kids who have been through
so much
in the last couple of years just trying to survive and take a day at a time,
and you’re taking them up on the most phenomenal trip with their
family and friends and they get to experience this. I think that’s just awesome.
I saw one of those planes come in and
pick up one of those banners that says you know, “Shop at Nordstrom’s, 50% off.”
And he went off with that thing.
He talked to us a lot,
answered a lot of questions,
and made sure to explain everything to us, which was pretty funny.
And a glider is about a 30:1 glide ratio.
You put an engine on it, it gets heavier, so in order to maintain your forward speed,
you have to go steeper, at about 8:1.
Coming out right now in a nice casual, way,
you can see the blimp way in the background.
They’re going out to line up in a V formation, kind of like the head of an arrow.
And that’s going to give the pilot up there
the opportunity to know which way the wind is coming from.
Just like a canoe in a river,
you want to point it upstream, or you're going to go sideways.
So they're just going to line up, they're going to bring some ballast out.
To compensate for the fact that the sun has in fact come out.
And the balloon has dried off from the moisture that was on it from the rain earlier.
One guy's bringing the ladder out to make it easier to get on and off.
So everybody's got a little bit to do,
and we'll be going out there shortly.
Well, the flight should be fairly smooth, but if for some reason you feel nauseous, there are those little barf bags on board.
[radio] Four three niner, cleared for takeoff, there's a blimp in the departure and inbound in the blimp spot. Did you hear that? We have the blimp in sight. Clear to go, three three, four three niner. Five zero lima, there is traffic departing runway three three.
So we took off. It was a nice
smooth steady climb out over the airport, and out over the Nimitz freeway
and Alameda.
Wow check that out. It’s just amazing stuff you can see from the air
that you didn't even know existed or never really looked for when you’re
down on the ground. You get a different perspective
on how big things are,
and how long a train is,
and stuff like that.
Yeah, we’re just going to bring it up to a hundred gallons.
We took off at Oakland airport
and flew up about a thousand feet
all over Oakland, Alameda, to downtown San Francisco and then the
Golden Gate Bridge.
We saw an aircraft carrier,
I think it was the USS Hornet.
We flew over Alameda,
and at one spot if you look down in the water,
you could see where some ships had sunk. They just left them there, so they were just the bottom.
That was really cool.
To your left, you'll see a blimp inbound.
Let me know when you see the blimp, and behind the blimp is another one-seventy-two.
He's inbound to two seven eight.
Five-zero-lima, blimp in sight.
We came out over
the bay bridge, and as we headed toward it, you can see along side of it,
that they're constructing a new bridge on the Oakland side.
and it was really a unique perspective to see the big pilings
being built out in the water, and I'd never been able to see those
from the bridge before. That was such an amazing view.
A thousand feet is just about the right height.
You're not too high where you can’t see anything, but you're high enough where you get to see everything.
We came in over
Treasure Island,
which used to be a Navy base.
As soon as we got up there, he said we could take our seat belts off, so I did and stood up and walked around.
Its not very big, but it was great. We came around through North Beach,
along the Embarcadero,
and did a nice little sweep around San Francisco.
We got around to Russian Hill, and I was looking for my apartment,
but I couldn't really see it from that angle.
We saw a big pack of tourists
getting off the boats at Alcatraz.
[Radio] I was wondering where the blimp is headed again?
[Tower] I'm not sure, he's just blimping around.
It was a little bit cold up there in the blimp,
and a little but noisy, but we were able to walk around,
take tons of pictures. Lawton was filming. I was sure to snap
as many pictures as I could.
Headed on down over the Marina Green.
And made a nice sweep around the Golden Gate Bridge
and had some nice views of the Marin Headlands.
Matt, he stayed in his seat the whole time with his seat belt on.
Now we're going to start a gentle descent here for our landing. So, I just wanted to make sure your seat belts are secure.
Aw hellz yeah. [laughter]
You never took yours off! Hellz no.
Total flight time, I guess we were up for about an hour.
The crew and the pilot communicate with hand signals. That’s because
blimps were invented before radios were invented. So they use the same hand signals
ever since the early days of aviation.
Well, we survived another one. [laughter]
This has been terrific. Thank you so much.
You're very welcome.
Wow. This is so amazing,
it really was.
It’s not every day
you can say I was up in a blimp.
So that was a great experience.
It was an all around very nice experience, and I'm glad I went.
I like blimps more than I like planes,
but I don't know if I like them more than helicopters, because I still haven't done that yet.
We got a squishy blimp out of it.
[Crashing and screaming sounds, laughter]